Produce Great Content, Every Time: A Useful 11-Point Framework

Creating valuable to your readers content is one of the key components of effective content marketing.

But here’s the problem:

How do you combine the lessons from all those articles?

They all teach you something valuable, but consolidating all those useful techniques and tactics isn’t always easy. For example, you might read an article about simple but effective copywriting techniques.

You get excited, and then you focus on practicing those in the next few articles you publish. But writing a few articles isn’t enough to establish a habit.

Even if you truly understand how to apply the things you learned, you might not remember to do them in the future. That is, unless, you have a way that forces you to remember them. A list of them.

Every time you write an article, you should make sure that you apply as many of the items on the list as possible.

You should make your own list.

However, I thought I’d create this post to get you a solid start. I’ve put together a list of 11 points that your content should meet if you want it to be effective.

It doesn’t matter if your content is text, audio, or video—most of these points will still apply.

This isn’t the time to come up with a headline—you should have done that already.

This is a point in a checklist. It’s asking you to evaluate a headline, which is much easier.

I can tell you if a painting is good or not (for the most part), but I sure as heck can’t paint a great one myself. Judging is almost always easier than doing.

Here, you want to consider two main factors…

Factor #1 is always relevance: The first question you should ask yourself when judging a headline is: “Is this relevant from my audience’s point of view?”

Basically, this means that your headline should contain keywords related to your niche.

And not just any keywords, but one’s that your actual target audience will recognize and probably care about.

Obviously, I write a lot about marketing on Quick Sprout. If you look at my headlines, you’ll see a lot of the following words:

traffic

leads

content

sales

SEO

autoresponder

These are common keywords contained in keyword phrases that I might target with my content.

But they are also widely used terms that almost all of my readers recognize.

So, when they see one of my headlines, they see at least one of the concepts they are interested in, which gets them to read the entire headline.

A common mistake: It’s easy to forget the perspective of your readers. Just because you might know an advanced term for something doesn’t mean your readers will. If they see a headline but are not sure if it relates to their interests, most will pass on it.

Factor #2 is curiosity: Once they see a keyword that is related to their interests, most readers will take a look at the whole headline.

Afterwards, they decide if it’s worth reading or not.

Basically, it comes down to this question: “Does it look interesting?”

If the reader is curious enough, they have no choice but to click through. That’s when you know you have a good headline.

Here’s an exercise you can do…

Go to a major news site or blog in your niche. In my case, for the sake of an example, I went to Search Engine Land, a major SEO news site.

Ideally, you want to find a list of their current most popular content or at least their most recent content somewhere on the homepage.

Next, you’ll replace one of the titles with the title of your content.

To do this, right-click on one of the titles while in Chrome, and choose “inspect element.” This will create a little pop-up.

In the left side of the pop-up, double click the title text (among the HTML code), and type in your headline instead:

When you’re done, press enter and close the pop-up.

The change that you made (to the highlighted part in the picture above) will now show up on your screen:

Now, do your best to get in the mindset of the reader you’re trying to attract.

Ask yourself in which order you would click on these titles (if at all).

If you choose your own article last, you have a big problem.

If you choose it first, you likely have a great title.

Obviously, it’s hard to be unbiased. If possible, get a second opinion from a friend or any of your fans who’d be willing to help you in this way.

2. Introductions have one main purpose…

Can you guess it? The purpose of an introduction?

This is actually from copywriting.

To get to the purpose of your introduction, let’s start with your headline.

A headline has one goal: to get someone to read the first sentence.

The first sentence is to get them to read the second sentence, and so on.

The introduction, as a whole, has one main purpose:

To get your reader to read the rest of the article (specifically the first subheading/section).

So, how do you do this?

Again, there are many ways, but here we’re just judging what you already have.

The key factor is whether your introduction is easy to read.

Readers should be able to feel like they are flying through it, understanding it, and moving down the page. It helps them feel like they are making progress.

Imagine reading a dense introduction that takes you five minutes to understand. Then, you look at the rest of the article and see that it’s 2,000 words long.

Chances are you won’t read the rest.

That’s why you want yours to be simple: to give the reader some momentum and to help them commit to reading the rest of the article.

You can look at the introductions written by any of your favorite bloggers to see this in action.

For example, here’s one from Brian Dean:

I can read those seven lines in about 10 seconds and move down to the first section.

Brian writes in short sentences and paragraphs and uses simple words. You should do the same.

Open your article again and time how long it takes you to read and understand the introduction (from your target reader’s point of view).

It shouldn’t be longer than 1-2 seconds per line. If it is, that means your introduction contains too much complex information and/or is formatted poorly.

3. Content is optimized for “skimmers”

Your most loyal readers read your every post.

They examine every sentence and every word because they love what you produce.

This makes up about a whopping 1-5% of your readers.

Be thankful for them; they are amazing.

But what about the other 95-99%?

They’re still important, but they either don’t have time or interest to read every post and every part of that post.

(Advanced) Element #2 – Format backgrounds to indicate new sections: If you’re willing to invest a bit of extra time and resources, you can make your content even better for skimmers (and all readers).

If you’ve ever read one of my Quick Sprout advanced guides (in the sidebar), you’d notice that each section has a different background color.

Instead of having to scan for a subheadline, which can be missed, skimmers can easily find a new section based on the background color.

You will have to learn some basic CSS to do this. However, after you apply it once, you can use it over and over again without spending much time on it.

(Advanced) Element #3 – Custom CSS boxes for important parts: Another advanced formatting element you can take advantage of is a box around any particularly important or impressive content. Like this:

Imagine scrolling down a page and seeing a bright green box jump out at you.

You’ll probably pay some attention to it.

If there’s something new or insightful in that box, you might go back up and read from the start of that section.

The following is the test you can use for each pair of subheadings. Can you fill out this sentence?

I need to know [subheading 1 topic] in order to understand [subheading 2 topic].

And you go through each subheading like that, in pairs.

For example, do your readers need to know how to understand what’s in their readers’ minds (subheading 1) in order to understand how to pick their most effective channels (subheading 2)?

Yes, they do.

If they don’t understand their audience’s demographics and psychographics (from that first section), they might start on the wrong channel.

Next up, do they need to pick a channel in order to build a content bank?

Again, yes they do.

Each channel needs a different type of content.

Get it?

For your content, create a list of all your subheadings. Then, go through that process for each section.

If they all naturally flow from one to the next, you’re good to go.

9. Have you answered all of your readers’ questions?

Before you write a post, you should know which of your readers’ problems you’re trying to solve.

Then, you should brainstorm a list of questions they might have about it.

For example, if you were writing a post about installing a simple WordPress site for a small business, readers might have the following questions:

How do I buy a domain name?

Is WordPress the best option?

What’s the simplest hosting option?

What are the best themes for businesses?

How do I optimize it for SEO?

You can also come up with this list after you write your post. You might uncover a few hidden questions while writing.

You don’t need to have a Q&A section in your content, but you should address all the questions somewhere.

It could be a section dedicated to it.

It could be a link to more information on a related topic (such as SEO optimization in our example).

Or it could be a brief explanation mixed into another section.

Go down your list, and once you’re sure that everything has been answered, check this item off the list.

10. Have you provided the best resources?

Unless you’re creating an ultimate, 10,000+word guide on a narrow topic, you can’t cover everything there is to know about that topic.

But you can link to additional resources.

You’ll notice that I link often in my posts whenever I mention something that I think a reader might be interested in.

For example, when I cite a research study or analysis, I link to the results.

If the reader wants more information about it, they can follow the link to get it. Considering only a small portion of readers will want to know more, a simple link is better than a detailed explanation in my article.

Another type of useful link is to related topics.

For example, if I’m writing about some aspect of SEO, I might be able to link to my posts (or someone else’s) about conversion rate optimization or content marketing:

While not all readers will be interested in those related topics, a healthy portion will be.

The point here is to always give readers the resources to learn more about any particular part of your content.

Go through your content, and pretend like you’re a typical reader (as well as you can).

Read every sentence, and ask yourself if there is anything related to that sentence you might like to read more about. If there is, and you haven’t included that resource, add one.

Once you feel like you’ve provided a great user experience with links, check this off the list.

11. What should the reader get out of this? Is it clear?

I think that just about every piece of content should have a conclusion at the end (maybe not necessarily with that title).

You can look at any of my posts for an example.

In this final section, you should sum up the main things that a reader should have gotten from the post and suggest where they should go from here.